


Best Days of Our Lives

by DrunkenShipper (greenrave)



Category: Invader Zim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenrave/pseuds/DrunkenShipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zim and Dib have grown up quite a bit since they first met.  The Tallest come to Zim with a new plan for Irken conquest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Days of Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 was written on a bottle of Leinenkugel's Grapefruit Shandy. Thank's Leinen!

“No transmissions?”

Zim was sitting in his computer chair, hugging his knees to his chest. All lights in the room were off save the green glow of the computer, where his Tallests’ faces filled the small screen. The door locked and bolted, and a curtain strung up for a makeshift office under the lofted bed, Zim still wasn’t assured of privacy. But it was the best he could do in the circumstances.

“College,” he had spat at Gir that day he came home from the school councilor’s office. “What a ridiculous suggestion. The great and mighty Zim shipped off to _college_.” He wanted to puke.

But the Dib had made his choice, a small out-of-state school that specialized in the “squishy sciences”, as the councilor had put it. With the boy gone, Zim had no one challenging him. He was free to reign. But he felt uneasy. Dib had gone where Zim couldn’t keep an eye on him. Anything could be going on out there, and while Dib could do nothing to keep Zim under control, Zim was at the very same disadvantage.

So he applied late, and had received a full ride scholarship to transfer in for the Spring semester. All he had to do was keep his grades above a 3.8. He had even found a major he was interested in; Anthropology. The first year he barely ran into Dib at all, but he took extra classes to make up for his missed time, and now he was right on track with Dib. They had met up and matched their schedules on purpose. After all, as Zim had suggested heavy-handedly, it was in both of their best interests to be as near each other as they could.

He thought it had been going well. He thought he had been making them proud. He thought he would be off this filthy stink planet within a few years. But now they come to him with a new plan.

“Something really great,” they told him. “But we can’t talk about much now. All of our transmissions are archived, and we can’t be sure these humans are dumb enough that our archives will be safe from any hacking. But rest assured, Zim, your cooperation is absolutely vital for the success of this mission. All we want you to do is let Dib believe you’ve lost. Let him think you’ve quit. Let him think there was a revolution or something, and most of the armada was taken out, and all that’s left are the few rebels who have gathered in some sort of peace-loving orgy somewhere, and no one is interested in colonizing Earth anymore.”

“It will be simple, my Tallest. I will report back every week with my progress.”

“No no!” they had replied, almost too quickly. But they recovered. “No, Zim. That’s the other thing. In order for this to really work, we have to be very secretive. Very careful indeed. The best thing to do, we believe, is to cut off all transmissions. Completely.”

Cut off all transmissions.

Zim shook himself mentally. “No transmissions?”

The Tallest looked solemn.

“But, for how long, my Tallest?”

“A few years, at least. This will be the last you hear from us. Do not try to contact us, it could compromise the mission.”

“I don’t understand, my Tallest.”

“The humans are dumb, yes. But that Dib, he seems to be an exception. He could hack into our transmissions with very little difficulty and, although it will be a little more difficult, he should be able to find our archives as well.”

Three miles away, in sweatpants and no shirt, half-eaten Chinese takeout on the counter and a mug of coffee on the floor next to the couch where he lounged with a wireless keyboard on his lap, the lines of code were already flying from Dib’s fingertips. In fact, he had been watching or recording Zim’s transmissions to the Tallest for about a year. But the archives, now that was something he had never considered. He turned the volume down on his headset and plowed onward, code flying. If he could get into the system and change the permissions before the transmission was cut, while he still had a link to the Irken network, it would be so much easier to find the archives. He could download them whenever he wanted when he got himself access. But if the transmission was cut it could take hours for him to find a link to the system, especially if what the Tallest were saying was true, that there would be no more transmissions between them and Zim.

He paused for a brief moment in his coding and listened to the conversation again.

“Just trust us, Zim. Keep an eye on the boy, make sure he doesn’t try anything funny. And keep your head down. No big plans, nothing to expose yourself to anyone else. Remember, we want that Dib boy to believe that we’ve given up hope of galactic conquest.”

 _Not likely,_ Dib thought, running his new script with his fingers crossed.

“Then, farewell, my Tallest. In a few years we will speak again.”

“A few years at the very least, Zim.”

And Zim’s computer slammed shut.

“Shit,” Dib muttered, swinging his legs to the floor and sending the coffee spilling across the hardwood floor. But the program was still running. The transmission hadn’t been cut yet, even though Zim’s connection was terminated.

“Come on, come on…” Dib muttered, while the program plowed onward through his protocols.

“We can see your program, Dib.”

His breath caught in his chest.

“We know you’re listening. Your connection is listed on our monitors. Don’t hang up, we would like to talk to you.”

Moving as slowly as possible, like a cornered rat trying not to attract the further interest of a cat, Dib switched on his microphone and camera.

“So good to see you, boy,” came the greeting.

“Hello,” Dib nodded, keeping his eyes locked with the aliens’.

“We have something to show you.”

And suddenly Dib’s screen was on fire.

 _No, just another transmission,_ he told himself. The Tallest’s voice came on over the sound of the flames and gunfire in the background.

“This is footage saved from Operation: Impending Doom. This gunshipship—” and right on cue an Irken craft went running past onscreen—“is Zim’s.”

“Where is this?” Dib breathed, horrified by the sights, but unable to look away.

“On Irk.”

It took a moment to set in.

“On Irk? Your planet?”

“Zim managed to singlehandedly take down Operation: Impending Doom within minutes of his assignment. He’s quite trigger-happy. No one could calm him down, and our ships and hangars were all destroyed. We banished him to FoodCourtia, but he escaped. Listen carefully, Dib.”

The war footage was replaced with the Tallests’ faces once again. “There is nothing on Earth that we want. It is too far away to be useful, and none of the resources are compatible with our engineering.”

The Irkens opened another file, filling Dib’s screen with blueprints covered in poorly-translated Irken. Dib got the gist, though. No iron, no aluminum, hardly any wood; the Irkens couldn’t use the materials Earth had to offer, even if they wanted to.

Dib shook his head. “Why tell me this?”

“We lied to Zim to get him out of our way. He is a nuisance to us. So we gave him a fake mission and sent him away.”

The other one spoke up now. “But he won’t leave us alone!”

“Calm,” the first one said. “That’s why we’re telling you. We know you listened to our whole conversation with Zim just now. We won’t be speaking to him again. Hopefully he will heed our orders and cause no trouble for you. And in exchange we ask only that you monitor him. Keep him…” the Tallest glanced sidelong at each other. “Keep him busy.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. Your access to our archives has been granted. You have full freedom within our system.”

Dib clicked over to his browser, and sure enough he could see folders and folders, all named after another Invader. Even Tak was listed. He opened this file first, and found only a handful of files, probably all from her short time on Earth.

“Of course you have no freedom to edit or remove files, only to view them, but you can see every archived transmission we have, from the beginning of Operation: Impending Doom II. Even everything from all the other Invaders, though you will have little interest in what they have to say.”

Dib wasn’t listening anymore. All of the Irken transmissions. Every one of them. He ran a program he had written a few months back to spy on a girl he had a crush on to check that there were no hidden or password protected files. None showed up. It was just a cursory check, and he could go far more in depth if he needed to, but…

“So his mission is a lie? He’s not actually trying to take over Earth?”

“No, not anymore. He doesn’t know we lied to him of course, but we told him not to try anything while we work on this big secret Master Plan of ours.”

“Right. And after a few years, when his heart’s broken because his Tallest seem to have abandoned him, then what? He’ll go right back to trying to destroy the Earth. Why not just tell him his mission was a lie?”

“We could do that, yeah,” said the second Tallest through a mouthful of sandwich. “Or,” he said, grinning.

“Or what?”

“You’ve got all the transmissions,” said the first. “Why don’t you just tell him?”

The Tallest cut the transmission.

Dib could call back, he knew how. He still had questions, and he definitely didn’t trust the aliens. He was about to send a transmission to them when his call box by the door buzzed.

He held the talk button down. “Hello?”

“Let me in filthy Earth human.”

Zim. Their Anthro project.

Dib held the unlock button until he heard the click that meant Zim had pulled the door open, then he ran over to the couch and shut his software down. He was just wiping up the coffee when Zim walked in.

He looked like he had been crying.


End file.
